Not a great video quality-wise, but it’s a good example of how flashy Peking Opera can be. It’s not all about singing that sounds like you’re killing chickens. (That’s what my mom says it sounds like. Judy says it sounds like cats dying. Oh the love…) =D
I’m sooo relaxed right now. *gooey puddle*
3 performances in 2 weeks is not good for the stress levels. ^^;
Thanks to ziggybecket, positivespace and twjudy for sitting through my dance recital. Every year they brave the crazy-ass audience to watch me dance. (Anyone ever notice how Chinese people never shut up through anything?!?)
I was actually pretty happy with my dance solo which is a relief cause it was causing me ridiculous amounts of worry. Yay for camcorders so you can record rehearsals and see how bad you suck before everyone else does too.
Thanks to Judy and Arthur for coming to all my rehearsals and taping them for me! If I ever figure out how to get vidoes off my camcorder into an uploadable format, I might post them. Don’t hold your breath though…
After my dance performance yesterday, I got to watch a showcase performance done by students from the Shanghai Peking Opera Conservatory.
The rest of post is just me rambling (with some ranting) about it so feel free to skip if you’re not interested. =D
Ok, I need to rant about a really big pet peeve of mine. Peking Opera performances that are brought here to perform are usually done through an outreach program of some sort to introduce the artform to American audiences. It drives me nuts when they get some ditz who does crappy-ass translations and knows nothing about opera. I’ve seen it happen a bunch of times now, and I just want to strangle whomever organizes this shit.
Yesterday’s emcee was some girl who, to put it nicely, was craptacular. If she didn’t know how to translate something, she litterally said: “oh… and something.” I kid you not. She translated a bunch of show names wrong, calling one show Farewell My Concubine when it wasn’t. (Hullo, that’s a pretty BIG mistake.) And then she didn’t know how to translate a lot of the technical terms into English. It was very very obvious that she was just winging it and all the nuances of what the Shanghai Conservatory teacher was saying was lost on the non-Chinese speaking audience members.
I have emcee-ed Peking Opera performances and I worked hard to practice and prepare. I made sure I did all my translations before-hand so I wouldn’t miss anything, and tried to make it as accessible as possible. It just drives me batty to see someone half-ass it because I care so passionately about sharing how amazing Peking Opera is with other people.
Ugh.
Anyways the crappy-ass emcee aside, the performance was awesome! The performers were all 13-14 year olds, the top of their classes, winners of all sorts of national competitions, and just amazing performers! They had a tiny wu dan girl (martial arts female roles) who was better than I could ever hope to be. And she was thirteen! I was rather jealous. LOL And the little 13 year old playing lao sheng (old male roles) was just beyond cool.
As envious as I was of how good they were, I wouldn’t want to go through what they have to to get where they are. One of the boys was talking about how he had to get up at 5:30 every morning. He was expected to do 6-700 kicks a day and he got his flexibility by having his teachers tie his leg straight up behind his head for an hour at a time. @_@
Ouch.
I think I can live with not being that awesome, thanks. ^^;
Oh and if you liked that clip above of the Peking Opera martial arts, here are a few more I found:
http://youtube.com/watch?v=WpeSNxSdFg4
http://youtube.com/watch?v=u_BbLctBYns
http://youtube.com/watch?v=_Q65zojX
http://youtube.com/watch?v=3qs7IFhz
